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SAM, Lall, Saikrishna, army of seniors clash in Micromax founders plea vs contempt warrants

The dispute resolution team of Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas (SAM) acted for YuTeleventures and its three directors, Rahul Sharma, Sumeet Kumar and Vikas Jain before a division bench of Delhi high court where they appealed against the order of a single judge of the Delhi high court issuing bailable warrants against them in a contempt of court case.

Earlier this month the Delhi high court had issued bailable warrants against the promoters of Micromax for contempt of its injunction order in November 2014 that set the amount of royalty to be paid by Micromax to Ericsson which holds patents on the technology, on the sale of it’s handsets reported Indian Express.

The court held that Micromax’s subsidiary YU Televentures also fell within the purview of the order and restrained it from importing and selling mobile handsets and other devices that infringe Ericsson’s registered patents without paying same amount of royalty as Micromax

While Micromax contended that the subsidiary was a separate legal entity, the Ericsson lawyers urged the court to pierce the corporate veil and hold that the two companies are essentially the same.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw on 15 December heard the appellants’ case and observed that the single bench judge didn’t hear the appellants and proceeded on an erroneous basis.

“That being the case,” held the bench, “we are of the view that the finding of the learned single judge in the order under appeal that they are guilty of contempt cannot be treated as conclusive.”

SAM partner Ajit Warrier, principal associate Sandeep Grover, associates Aditya Nayyar and Shreya Munoth, filed an appeal against the order of the single judge. Senior advocates PV Kapur, Sandeep Sethi and Dayan Krishnan were also engaged by SAM for the two appeals filed on behalf of Yu Televentures and individual directors.

Ericsson was represented by senior advocates Gopal Subramaniam, CS Vaidyanathan, Neeraj K Kaul and Pratibha M Singh along with advocates Singh & Singh Lall & Sethi founding partner Chander M Lall with Saya Choudhary Kapur, Ashutosh Kumar and Robin Koolwal.

Micromax was represented by senior advocate AS Chandhiok with Saikrishna & Associates’ partner Saikrishna Rajagopal, associate partner J Sai Deepak, Sunil Dalal, Savni Dutt, Rachel Mamatha, Avijit Sharma.

At the hearing on 15 December 2015 before the single Judge, the personal presence of the directors was dispensed with and Yu Televentures has tendered interim payments to Ericsson without prejudice to all its rights and contentions.

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